Administrative Court ruling: Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution may monitor AfD

The Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution is permitted to monitor the AfD as a suspected case of right-wing extremism. The Munich Administrative Court rejected a complaint by the Bavarian regional association against the monitoring as unfounded. In the three-day oral hearing, the court found actual evidence of anti-constitutional activities within the AfD.

The evidence is sufficient and so significant that the public can also be informed, said the chairman of the 30th Chamber at the Munich Administrative Court, Michael Kumetz. He justified this with statements directed against Muslims and other people with a migration background or that drew a comparison between today’s German courts and those from the Nazi era. There were also statements that were “based on an ethnic-biological understanding of the people,” the court said in its justification. “Observing only individual district associations would be too simplistic,” said Kumetz.

Appeal initially not allowed

AfD state chairman Stephan Protschka announced that the party would examine all legal options to challenge the decision. The court initially did not allow an appeal. The AfD would have to apply for this via the Bavarian Administrative Court.

The Higher Administrative Court in Münster had already declared the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution’s observation of the AfD to be legal.

In 2022, the Bavarian Office for the Protection of the Constitution announced that it would be monitoring the AfD using intelligence resources because there were indications of unconstitutional activities. The AfD initially filed an expedited appeal against this and lost in two instances. The main case was heard at the administrative court. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution had declared that it would refrain from using informants until the matter was clarified in court and would only use publicly accessible sources. In order to substantiate the suspicion of right-wing extremist tendencies, the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had presented the court with extensive evidence, including thousands of pages of chat logs.

Court: No individual verbal outbursts

During the trial, the AfD side had always argued that the extremist statements listed were the excesses of individuals, which had always been sanctioned by the party – for example with exclusion procedures and bans from holding office – or which had been dealt with by the AfD anyway due to people leaving the party. “The acknowledged statements by representatives of the AfD do not represent just individual verbal excesses,” said presiding judge Kumetz.

Bavaria’s Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann (CSU) said after the verdict that it was now important to continue to closely monitor the development of the AfD. “The Free State of Bavaria has also further increased the number of staff at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution to increase the monitoring of right-wing and left-wing extremists as well as Islamists,” the CSU politician told the German Press Agency in Munich.